Think of the tripwire offer as a way to increase the amount you can spend to advertise and acquire new leads without throwing the economics of your business off.

In this post, we’ll dive deep into what a tripwire offer is, the major components, and ideas with tons of examples for making them.

What is a tripwire offer?

I want to start this off by saying I don’t like the term tripwire offer. At KyLeads, we refer to them internally as front end offers.

When you call something a tripwire offer, it seems like you’re tripping your customers up and tricking them into buying what you’re selling.

That’s not cool.

Your aim should be to add value and build a lasting relationship that encourages your users to trust you.

Tripping them up isn’t a great way to start that process.

Moving on.

A tripwire offer is a relatively low-cost high-quality product specifically designed to build your customer list. They’re priced at $5 – $50 with the majority being less than $20.

The price point you choose is dependent on your brand. If your average product is one thousand dollars then a front end offer can be as high as $200.

A common example of a tripwire offer is free plus shipping. Brands give away a product for free and just ask you to pay shipping.

The products are sometimes so cheap they’re gaining a small profit which offsets their advertising costs. They’re building a customer list for free.

Free plus shipping isn’t the only type of tripwire offer you can make. We’ll get into more ideas later in this post.

Benefits of a front end offer

There are many benefits of using tripwire offers to build your mailing list. Some of them are obvious and some are a bit nuanced. All of them will help you move closer to your goals

Offset marketing and advertising costs

When you have a longer sales cycle, the costs of selling, advertising, and marketing can add up quickly. A well thought out tripwire offer will not only offset those costs but yield a decent profit.

It costs money to generate traffic on the internet. Some people may argue that blogging and social media are free. They are – kind of.

While you may not pay for them directly, they still cost time.

Is your time worthless?

Not at all.

At the very least, your time is worth $20/hour.

I know I spend more than an hour researching, writing, and promoting every blog post for Optimizing For Humans. That’s not including the time I spend on other social media platforms creating native content.

That content needs to get clicked on and perform or we’re losing money. A tripwire offer makes sure we offset those costs from the beginning.

When done right, people are ecstatic you gave away so much value. Work hard to be part of the group that creates happy customers from the tripwire offer.

Micro commitments

When faced with a big decision, the fight or flight mechanism kicks in. When confronted with an immediate decision, people tend to choose flight. That won’t be the decision in your favor.

In his book One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Robert Maurer talks about the science behind this process. Our survival mechanisms have evolved over the years to treat any new stimuli as a threat until it’s proven otherwise.

Micro commitments soften the blow by allowing them to make smaller decisions over time. Your prospect signs up for your mailing list, buys a small product, then buys a bigger one.

All the while, they’re slowly committing to your brand and message. A tripwire offer is a small commitment your prospect makes brand which sets them up to more comfortably complete a larger commitment.

Components of a front end offer

As we’ve mentioned before, a tripwire offer isn’t something you throw together and start selling.

There are four components that make an effective front end offer.

Relatively cheap

All price points are relative. Most front end offers are between $5 and $50 dollars. That figure isn’t written in stone. We have some front end offers priced at $12 and other ones priced at $97.

When you price your tripwire offer, look at how much other products in your portfolio cost. For example, if you have a flagship course for $1997 then you can get away with pricing a smaller course for $197.

Or, you can create a different type of product altogether. If you’re known for high-quality shoes, what’s stopping you from selling gloves or socks at a lower price point that complements them?

High quality

This is the place most people drop the ball. They think their front end offer can be lower quality because it’s cheap.

Why?

A tripwire offer is the first interaction many people have with your products. If you fail to impress them in the beginning then why would they buy a more expensive product from you?

You’ll be stuck with customers who won’t buy your main products. It’s easier to make this mistake than you think.

Let’s say a business uses a bottle of diet pills as their tripwire offer. On the backend, they sell a twelve-week intensive fitness boot camp and private lessons.

On the surface, it’s all weight loss so they should sell pretty well. In reality, the kind of person looking for fitness training and the kind of person looking for diet pills are quite different.

In one case the person wants results without working too hard. In the other case, the person is willing to put in the work (and time) to get the results.

Very easy to use

It shouldn’t take another product to explain how to use the first one. Whatever you offer should be easy to redeem, implement, or get.

There should be minimal effort for someone to get results from your offer. Certain things are no brainers like selling a watch. Just make sure you don’t make them jump through hoops to redeem the offer.

Other things may be a little more difficult like information on particular techniques EG photography or photoshop.

The onus is on you to distill whatever you’re offering into a form that’s easy to consume, use, or apply.

Ideas and how to create a tripwire offer

We’ve covered a lot of ground and you already know how to use a front end offer, the benefits, and the key components. Now, the only thing left is to build it.

Use part of an existing product

Though this is the fastest way to create a tripwire offer, it’s not feasible in every situation. There’s no way to give away part of a pair of shoes.

The ideal products for this strategy tend to be information products. If you have a flagship course that sells for a few thousand dollars you can spin off the first few modules and offer it as a low cost alternative.

You can also condense or repurpose your product into an express version made just for that purpose. For example, a course can be developed into an Ebook or a few short videos full of actionable content.

Lower or smaller versions of physical products

This has been done in many forms over the years.

You know those people who stand around in Walmart or Sam’s club with small free samples for you to try out? They actually sell a lot of product.

The process is based on reciprocity. People are grateful for you because you introduced them to a new product without the risk. They feel compelled to do something in return.

The only thing they can really do for you is buy more products.

That’s what thrive market did to boost sales. They gave away some and people came back to buy.

You don’t have to actually give it away for free. You can also give it away at a small cost that comes off as free.

Have you seen the free plus shipping offers on Facebook and Instagram? They’ll give you the product for free but you’ll have to cover the cost of shipping.

They’re able to do this (and turn a profit) because the product is so cheap and they’re counting on you coming back to buy from them in the future.

Books

With the advent of self-publishing and on-demand printing, books have become a viable revenue stream. They earn full-time incomes just from selling books on Amazon.

Though that’s possible, we’re looking it from another direction. This is the perfect lead generation method to build your customer list.

You can either self-host the books or add them to Amazon. Amazon doesn’t give you data about the people who buy your products. Our aim is to build a customer list so this doesn’t work for us.

There’s a way around it.

Add calls to action inside the book to funnel traffic to specific landing pages. You know the people who land there have already bought your book and you can market to them accordingly.

The better method and the one we prefer is to self-host your books. You can go the print on demand route or an Ebook route. The choice is yours. The important part is that they’re being added to your database as a customer.

You can couple the book with a free plus shipping offer. They get the book for free but it’s necessary to pay shipping. You can offset the printing costs by pricing the shipping to cover the costs of everything.

Low-cost software

Most software is on the SaaS model where you pay for it every single month or year. When you sell high-quality software for a one-off payment, people are ready to buy.

The challenge here this model are ongoing development costs. If the software needs to be maintained and is constantly evolving then this method may not be the best for you.

If, on the other hand, you can generate enough revenue on the backend from the software then this could be a viable strategy.

Neil Patel is using free software to generate leads for his advertising agency.

Instabuilder is a landing page builder you can buy for a one-off payment.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are an interesting way to generate customers. They’re easy to create if you have the knowledge and are super valuable.

Be sure to include clear instructions for your spreadsheet or people may use it incorrectly.

Megan Minns uses a low-cost annual planning spreadsheet to introduce new audience members to her content.

It consists of two videos and multiple spreadsheets that help them make the most of their revenue goals. At only $12, it’s well within the range of tripwire offers.

The next time Megan Minns wants to market to her customers, they’ll be ready to listen.

Template bundles

In many niches, there are complicated strategies or techniques people use to get results. Throughout your time, you’ve likely adapted or created your own techniques for doing things.

That information can easily be distilled into and packaged into a high-quality template or bundle of templates.

Design Bundles offers a lot of different templates for their customers. One of them is a boutique marketing bundle. It’s a series of templates to help with designing.

It only costs fourteen dollars but as of this writing, it’s on sale for seven dollars.

Small Business Marketing Tools provides marketing tools and strategies for small business owners. One of their products is an advertising and marketing plan.

Normally, they’re six dollars apiece but when you buy them as a bundle it costs ten dollars.

These are just a few ideas to create your tripwire offer. Keep in mind what a front end offer is supposed to do and you’ll be able to use a wide range of products to achieve that goal.

How to use tripwire offers with quizzes

The beauty of using a quiz for lead generation is that you give personalized results. With those personalized results, you’re also in a unique position to give personalized offers.

Your subscribers are most engaged right after they sign up for your mailing list. Take advantage of this opportunity by offering up a high-quality tripwire offer on the thank you page or first email.

To do it in KyLeads, you’ll just need to create an outcome that redirects your subscribers to a page where your front end offer lives.

On the page they land on, the first thing is to present the personalized results they got from taking the quiz. After that, merge the content of your page into your front end offer.

The same thing is possible with normal opt-in forms, but quizzes work even better because the content is personalized.

For example, if you have a quiz related to fitness and your outcomes are:

In shape

Out of shape

Average shape

Body builder

You’d have four different pages where the quiz takers go and the one they land on is dependent on the outcome they get. For each of those pages, you can do one of two things:

Create a different tripwire offer for each outcome.

Use one tripwire offer and position it differently for each of the outcomes.

The key is to make sure the offer is closely tied to the outcome your quiz taker got.

Whichever route you choose, test your copy and offers until your tripwire is offsetting the costs of lead generation.

Examples of front-end offers

Let’s look at a couple examples of tripwire offers used in different mediums and at different times. They all share a few similarities which we’ve gone over in this post.

Matt from AutoGrow offers his blog readers a swipe file with multiple templates they can use at different places in their funnel.

All you need to do is pay a very reasonable fee.

Agora is a well-known financial advisory research firm company that writes some of the most compelling copy I’ve seen on the web. In the above image, they’re giving away a popular book with a free plus shipping offer.

They also include a subscription to their newsletter – their core offer – in the tripwire offer.

DoorDash is a food delivery company that specializes in getting you food from places that don’t normally deliver. Their major selling point is speed and the exclusivity.

In the above Facebook ad, they’re offering new customers the chance to try out the service for just a dollar. Note how they remove any limits and restate the promise of their core offer.

Columbia House Records has been around so long that they were selling vinyl records. They’ve also been creating compelling offers for decades.

Here, they’re giving away records or tapes at a price they can’t afford. The fine print in the corner stipulates that you have to buy at least eight more over the course of three years at the regular price.

This is interesting because you’re essentially signing a contract in order to get the first offer. Think of it like a signing bonus.

If you’re a music lover then I’m sure it would’ve been an easy decision.

Conclusion

Tripwire offers are a proven way to offset your advertising costs and ensure you’re building an engaged customer list.

There are tons of products you can use as a front end offer but they all share certain characteristics.

They’re very fairly priced

They’re high quality

They’re easy to implement

Closely related to your core business

It may take a bit of testing to understand the perfect tripwire offer for your business but once you’ve gotten it, you’ll see the benefits first hand.

Let us know what you’re using as a tripwire offer in the comments and don’t forget to share.

If no one sees your epic quiz then it might as well not exist. Quiz promotion is important so you get it in front of as many people as possible. If not, your meticulously crafted title and the painstaking effort you put into the questions is all for nothing.

It’s a little bit more than pasting the link on all the social media platforms and hoping for the best. In this post, we’ll walk you through six ways to promote your quiz so it yields the results you’re looking for.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the elephant in the room. With over two billion monthly active users, there’s no way we can ignore it. There are multiple ways to use the platform to get your quiz in front of as many people as possible.

This topic can be a post on its own so we’ll just touch on the most important points.

a. Post to your page

This is the first and usually the only thing people do for quiz promotion. It’s not enough if you want to properly promote your quiz.

When posting to your Facebook page, Facebook itself will pull the description and featured image from the page you embedded your quiz on. That may give you something that looks like this:

That’s not ideal in many situations. Instead, you’ll want to add your own image and description to maximize your share of the newsfeed.

Remove the image pulled by Facebook and add your own.

With longer copy and a better image, you’ll be able to increase the click-through rate to your quiz.

b. Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are a tricky way to promote your quiz. If you join up and drop links you’ll likely be banned. If you don’t take your quiz promotion seriously in groups then you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities.

Here’s how to do it right.

Join the Facebook groups you’re interested in before you’ve created your quiz

Be an active member for a week or two before you decide to link your quiz

Participate in discussions and create your own

When it’s time to promote your quiz, be sure to preface the post with a description about what you’re promoting, why it matters, and what they stand to gain. Here’s an example of a Facebook group post:

Rinse and repeat until you’re satisfied

c. Facebook ads.

Last but not least are Facebook ads. Please note these are optional. You don’t need Facebook ads or any paid medium for quiz promotion. It’s an added boost.

Alright, when using Facebook ads, it’ll look similar to the normal Facebook post you used to promote your quiz. There are a few key differences.

Select your target audience or use a saved audience. If you’ve already added the Facebook pixel to your website then you should be building a saved audience. Use that as a starting point and create a larger lookalike audience

If you don’t have a saved audience, set up targeting based on what you already know about your audience. Keep it as broad to maximize your reach.

Use as much of the space provided for the description of the ad to tell a story about why they should click

Use a high impact image. I suggest you make one specifically for the ad you want to launch. This post has the ideal image dimensions for ads.

When people click on the ad, the quiz start page will be turned off so they get right into the first question when they land on the quiz

Redirect results of the quiz to a new page or add a Facebook targeting pixel so you can keep track of conversions from your ads.

That’s how you can use Facebook ads to promote your quiz in a nutshell. In addition, do your best to hit an emotional chord and illustrate (using words or imagery) why your quiz matters.

2. Twitter

Anything can go viral on Twitter if it gets into the right hands. Your job is to give your tweet a fighting chance.

The lifespan of a tweet is notoriously short (around 20 minutes). While it’s alive, there are a few things to make sure it catches the right eye and gets retweeted.

When you paste a link to Twitter, it’ll pull the default featured image from the page. This works well for a blog post but not for your quiz.

Instead, we’ll add our own image and description so we’ll be able to get the most out of your tweet.

This is a good start, but not enough. There are two more things you can do to maximize the efficacy of every tweet.

The first one is to use hashtags. On Twitter, hashtags allow people to search for relevant tweets. For example, if your quiz is about fitness you can use the hashtags #fitness to increase your exposure.

Use a tool like Hashtagify to find the best hashtags for your niche. Keep them in a safe place because they’ll come in handy for more than just promoting your quiz. You can use them anytime you tweet something on the platform.

The second way is to tweet at specific influencers in your niche. Before you compile a list of all the twitter influencers and spam them with tweets, it’s important to build a cordial relationship.

Do this by following them on Twitter and tweeting out a few of their posts. When you’re ready to tag them in your own tweet, you’ll be a familiar face.

This will increase the likelihood of them retweeting or even taking the quiz.

3. Forums

Forums seem to be the red-headed stepchild of the digital marketing world. People talk about them every now and then but they never get the recognition they deserve.

They’re one of the best places to promote your quiz and get targeted traffic but there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

The wrong way is to sign up and spam your link across all the threads you can find.

The right way is to be an active member, mention your quiz when it makes sense, and add it to your forum signature.

If you’re not a member of any forums right now, there’s a simple way to find a few to join.

Search Google with the keywords “niche + forum.” Replace the word niche with any relevant keyword.

Google will bring back a lot of results like in the image above. Click on the ones that look promising and browse around the forum. You want to look for two things.

1 How active the forum is. When the last post was and how many comments did the most popular post get?

2 Whether or not you can add a signature to your profile. This is an added bonus but not a requirement.

In the image above, you can see the forum is active because the last thread was recent and there are a lot of posts and threads.

Once you’ve identified a few targets, go ahead and sign up for an account.

It’s tempting to start creating threads whose only aim is your quiz promotion but the moderators may decide to ban you. Instead, focus on adding value to the community for a while. This softens the ground and when you decide to promote your quiz, it’ll be taken in good faith and amplified by the community itself.

Not only that, the people who take the quiz will give you direct feedback on what they liked or disliked.

For the forum post itself, follow these guidelines:

Write 100 words or more explaining what the quiz is about

Tell people what they stand to gain from the quiz

Be explicit about who the quiz is for

Let the members know you’ll be available for them if they have any questions or want to take the next step with their results

4. Email

Your current audience is your best bet to get the ball rolling for your quiz. Who’s more engaged with your brand than your email subscribers?

I don’t need to remind you how intimate email marketing can be.

There are two ways to promote your quiz with your email list

1 A general email newsletter blast

2 An evergreen drip campaign

Your email newsletter is the best way to communicate with your audience. It can also be a blunt force instrument when used improperly. Your quiz helps you rectify that problem.

It may seem odd to use up your quiz promotion efforts on your existing email subscribers since quizzes are for lead generation. The beauty is that they’ll help you segment your mailing list and send more effective messages in the future.

How to send a great email is a bit beyond the scope of this posts but I’ll focus on the most important aspects.

After the initial email blast and a follow-up it wouldn’t be reasonable to keep emailing about your quiz to your existing subscribers.

Instead, email your new subscribers about it. These are people who’ve signed up for your mailing list in different ways. That could be a content upgrade, a webinar, etc.

Your quiz will help you fill in the information you need to send better messages. After you deliver on the promise that got someone to sign up, follow it up in the same email (or the next one) with a call to action asking them to take the quiz.

Be clear about whom it’s for, what they stand to gain, and how long it’ll take them to complete. Once done, they’ll be further segmented in your email marketing service and give your marketing automation new legs.

5. Your Existing Traffic

No matter how much or little traffic you get right now, you can use it to your advantage for quiz promotion.

There are multiple strategies you can adopt.

Homepage Quiz Promotion

If your website is like most sites on the internet then your homepage is one of your most visited pages. People go there to learn more about your brand but you can flip the script and help them learn more about themselves with a quiz.

The best quizzes tell us a bit more about ourselves.

Add a relevant section and call to action on your homepage. For best results place it above the fold of the page. This isn’t required but it’ll definitely help drive your point home and focus your visitors on your quiz.

Floating bar and full screen takeover

A full screen takeover obscures all the content on the page until a visitor interacts with it. They have no choice but to see your message.

A floating bar isn’t as obtrusive but it’s still noticeable because it sits at the top or bottom of the page.

Whether you choose a full screen takeover or a floating bar, you expose a large amount of your traffic to your call to action. The end result is more people taking your quiz and more leads.

Neil Patel uses a full screen takeover to let people know about his quiz.

Sidebar

The sidebar is a bit of a mixed bag. If studies like this one by Bryan Harris are to be trusted; you can actually increase conversions without it.

I mean, look at this sidebar from the New York Times homepage.

I digress.

Even though the data may be saying one thing, it can be hard to give up what you’ve always used. When you have a sidebar, put it to good use by adding a call to action for your quiz there. It may increase that 0.3% conversion rate be a percentage point or two.

6. Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the best platforms for referral traffic. When other social media platforms are trying to increase dwell time at all costs, Pinterest seems to be doing the opposite.

Another unique feature of Pinterest is the lifespan of pins. Where a tweet lasts for minutes and a Facebook post lasts for days, a pin can be cycled over the course of weeks, months, or longer.

Every person that repins exposes the pin to their audience and restarts the cycle. This is a good thing. The amount of Pinterest followers you have isn’t as important as the amount of people you can reach with your pins.

It’s not the same thing.

You can have a hundred Pinterest followers but have a reach in the tens of thousands.

How is this possible?

Group boards.

Group boards have contributors pinning content and looking for content to repin. When you’re accepted as a contributor, you’re free to pin content which will later be picked up by other people to share with their audience.

Your content will be spread far and wide even if you only have a few followers.

How do you find group boards?

I’m glad you asked. There’s a useful website called Pingroupie.com. It’s a directory of Pinterest group boards that can be sorted by number of followers, category, number of collaborators, etc.

Once you’ve identified group boards you’d like to join, navigate to their profile page on Pinterest and follow the board. If you don’t follow the board then the administrators can’t add you.

The profile page will give you a bit of useful information. Normally, the administrators will put the contributor and board guidelines here. You’ll also learn who the administrator is. It’s the first contributor image you see.

With that information, you can reach out to the administrator and request to join. The best way is to send an email but if you can’t find their email address then you can also send a message through Pinterest (this has a lower success rate).

Once you’ve been added to a number of group boards, pin your Quiz as well as other people’s content. Ensure your image dimensions are 2:3 or 1000×1500 pixels.

Note: upgrade your Pinterest account to a business profile to unlock rich pins. Rich pins increase your click through rates for your pins and allow you to access analytics.

Conclusion

There are countless ways to promote your quiz and get it in front of more people. The more specific methods will depend on your niche and the focus of your quiz.

We’ve walked through six methods that will work for you no matter what your niche is.

Start with your Facebook page and groups. Next, create and schedule a series of tweets with researched hashtags and mention influencers in your space. After that, move on to forums and send out an email blast to get the ball rolling.

Round out your efforts by tapping into your existing traffic and setting up an evergreen Pinterest campaign.

Remember, these are just a few methods for quiz promotion. Let us know what other strategies you’ve been using in the comments and don’t forget to share.

You click through and it has a nice title and the description makes you want to dive right in – so you do. Something is off. The quiz questions seem irrelevant.

You answer a few but feel like you’re being shortchanged so you click the back button and write the website off. An otherwise great experience is marred by poor presentation.

The potential of interactive quizzes to get you 2-10x more leads is too good to pass up. With the right topic and audience, the quiz practically does the work itself. Well, that’s the theory.

In reality, you need to ask the right questions to get the results you want and give your audience the result they want.

There’s a simple process to follow that’ll make all the difference when it comes to crafting the right quiz questions. Let’s dive in.

Quiz questions come last, the outcomes come first

After you’ve gotten the best title, the next step isn’t to write quiz questions. First, you need to decide what the outcomes for your quiz takers are.

Before you leave the airport you need to know where you’re going right?

This is the same principle.

When you create the outcomes first, you set up guideposts for your quiz questions. It prevents you from going too wide with your questions and having to rewrite them later. At the same time, the outcomes are what your audience is waiting for. It’s the intrinsic part of motivation.

Here are some things to keep in mind when writing your outcomes:

They should be crafted for a specific segment of your audience

If you’re Buzzfeed or a general media company that doesn’t care too much for targeted leads then you can make the outcomes generic.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking for qualified leads then your outcomes should speak to them. If not, they’ll feel shortchanged and write you off without a second thought.

That’s not the goal here.

Instead of that route, drill down. Don’t be afraid to expose the real pains and challenges someone who gets a specific result would experience.

For example, if your quiz is focused on the fitness level of the quiz taker, you’d have multiple outcomes like beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

Your outcome for beginner could let them know they’re a beginner, touch on specific problems beginners tend to experience, and the next steps to take.

If you have a quiz about a little black dress, your outcomes could focus on different styles. Touch on why that dress’ style fits their personality (and even the story of the dress), a few ways to wear the dress, and events where it’s ideal.

Note: Longer ecommerce descriptions and storytelling have been known to sell more products. Check out this website, for a first hand look at how stories make your offers more valuable.

Aim for a few paragraphs as opposed to a few sentences.

Remember, these are people who went through your entire quiz, parted with their email address, and want to know more about themselves and the problem you’re addressing. A few paragraphs won’t scare them away.

Use images in the outcomes

The same holds true with your quiz outcomes. Incorporate a relevant image to illustrate the outcome. You get bonus points if you use custom illustrations or images.

A personality quiz is evergreen. If you use a product recommendation quiz then it’ll last at least as long as the season.

Moving on.

In the end, spending more time on your quiz outcome makes it more likely your quiz taker will share it with their followers on social media. It also increases engagement on the follow-up emails you send.

Crafting quiz questions that work

After you’ve made a few outcomes you can put together questions that’ll get you the results you want. There are no hard and fast rules for making quiz questions. There are a few guidelines that when followed will help you make compelling quiz questions.

Keep your target audience in mind for quiz questions

You made outcomes for specific segments of your target audience. The questions follow suit. If you did the research needed to make the right outcomes in the first part then this part is easy. After all, 71% of people feel personalization would impact their decision to interact with brands.

The beauty of quiz questions is that you can be less formal than in other correspondence. It’s meant to be a fun experience that creates intrinsic motivation for participants. Even if you tend to be more formal, you can use quizzes to loosen up a bit.

Structure the questions to use terms your target audience would use in normal conversation when describing the problem you’re addressing. The proper term may be xd341 glass but your audience knows it as iPhone glass. Use iPhone glass in your question.

If they call carbonated water with food coloring coke, guess what? You call it coke.

Go from easy to hard

The fastest way to scare people away from your quiz is to start with questions that’re too hard or involved. Ease into the process.

Think of it like courtship. You don’t come out and tell someone you’d screw their brains out (if you do let me know how that works for you in the comments), you ease into it. You start with a coffee date, send messages, long calls, dinner, and then you ask them to go steady.

There’s no difference between that and your quiz questions. Well, the only difference is that the quiz only takes two to three minutes.

Avoid being clever with your questions or trying to trick people. You want clean data that’s representative of your new subscriber. If they don’t understand the question then they won’t enjoy the experience or give you the best answer.

That doesn’t mean the questions should be boring. Start with an exciting question and end with an exciting question.

Allow your brand to shine

You want your quiz to be a positive touchpoint between you and your audience.

Do use language your audience uses and understands.

Don’t incorporate current pop culture references.

You don’t want to limit the shelf life of your quiz because you tied it to the world cup. The people who opt in because you mentioned Ronaldo will unsubscribe quickly. A better option is to incorporate themes at the core of your brand.

For a fashion brand that may be luxury and sophistication.

Or maybe your brand centers on being sustainable. Incorporate those elements into your quiz.

If creating lasting success is one of the pillars of your brand then make that a part of your quiz.

Your brand is unique and by associating with you, your audience uses you as a reflection of their self-identity. Reinforce the qualities that brought them to you in the first place and avoid the lure of quick spikes in traffic.

Number of questions (7-10)

There’s no perfect answer to this question. Some places say seven, some say eight, some say as many as twelve. We have our own data which we’ll publish in due time.

Until then, stick with between 7-10 questions. This is long enough to feel like you’ve asked questions that reveal true insights and short enough to prevent fatigue. Even though it’s interactive content, that doesn’t mean people won’t get tired if it goes on too long.

Life is a distracting taskmaster.

Remember, this is a rule of thumb so I encourage you to test it yourself.

Last but not least, here’s a resource that’ll help you jog your creative muscles to create compelling quiz questions: Conversation Starters World

Conclusion

Interactive quizzes can do everything you need them to do. That will only happen if you ask the right questions.

It’s important to find a balance between what you need to grow your business and what your audience wants. If you fail in either regard then the quiz won’t perform as well as you hope.

Each quiz question, when done right, will move your prospect closer to where you need them to be in order to make a buying decision. Keep the following points in mind:

The outcomes come first

Write questions that appeal to a specific segment of your audience

Go from easy to hard

Don’t try to be clever

Show your brands personality

Keep your quizzes below ten questions

Let us know if you have any questions or thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to share.

For every 200 people that visit a website, only one person takes the desired action.

That’s no good.

What do most people do?

They attack the traffic problem and dump more and more people onto a site that’s underperforming.

There’s a better way.

Interactive quizzes and other forms of interactive content have shown time and again that they convert. 3.5x more marketers reported interactive content as converting very well when compared to static content.

We learn best with engaging content. Studies show that people who interacted with the content they were learning from experienced more deep learning. You retain more of what you’re exposed to.

The case for interactive quizzes (and other interactive content)

When I was growing up, we’d always buy the Sunday paper on the way home from church. At home, everyone would go in tseparate directions.

My mom would be making dinner (always smelled great), my dad would be in in the living room watching a game, and my siblings and I would be sprawled out in front of him solving the crossword puzzle.

I was in charge of asking my dad for answers. My older sister was in charge of tapping my mom. My other sister would enlist the neighbors. Once we were done, we’d keep the paper in a special place while we waited for Sunday to roll around again.

On the way home from church, my dad would buy us the paper and we’d check our answers in the back seat. Everyone, even our neighbors, wanted to know how it went.

This is motivation that comes from external factors. You do it because of other rewards such as money, fame, respect, etc.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with either motivation, they both hold a place in your life. You go to work for a paycheck. You play with your child because it feels good.

The major difference is how long the motivation lasts. I write for intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. It helps me grow KyLeads but I also enjoy doing it. If I hated it then I’d choose a different route or hire a writer.

Interactive quizzes tap into the intrinsic part of motivation. We take them because they’re fun and we learn more about ourselves. We’re not about to win a million dollars or recognized around the world by personality.

We do get a warm fuzzy feeling when the results are positive. We like to not only understand who we are but share that information with people around us.

How would you feel if, after taking the quiz above, you realized you’re crushing your conversion rates? You’d feel pretty good and be more inclined to share your expertise.

Interactive quizzes reduce bounce rate

While there’s no definitive source for what a good bounce rate is because of so many factors, there are benchmarks.

The last thing I want to touch on when it comes to quizzes for lead generation is their ability to help you unlock useful information about your subscribers. Each person that takes an interactive quiz gets a result personalized to them.

It doesn’t and shouldn’t stop there. Take the insights you gain to personalize your email marketing, your offers (more on that later in this article), and your website. Humans are browsing your website, not data points, treat them accordingly.

Generating interactive quiz topics and titles

To derive the benefits of interactive quizzes for lead generation, your quiz topic needs to be something your audience is interested in.

The people who visit KyLeads would be interested in a quiz about Game of Thrones. So would half a billion other people. It wouldn’t be a good fit for what we’re trying to accomplish. So to come up with a good topic you need to:

Dig in to your audience

Who are you serving? Are they men or women? Are they old or young? Are they interested in tech or farming? What problems do they come to you to solve?

You can answer a few questions like age and gender with Google analytics. You can also figure out which pieces of content they’re already consuming. If you don’t have much traffic then visit popular website like Quora to find popular questions.

For example, you have a post on your website titled “21 little black dresses to try this summer” and it gets a lot of traffic. You could easily make a quiz that focuses on helping them choose the best dress for them based on their personality.

Create the topic with a certain segment in mind

Now that you know who your people are and what they want, whip up the quiz with them in mind. For example, you can have two types of people visiting your little black dress post.

One could be men. One could be women.

They need different quizzes. The guys are there for their sister, or wife, or girlfriend. The ladies are most likely there for themselves. The questions should help lead the quiz takers down the right path.

Knowledge quizzes work because they challenge the taker. They dare you to put yourself to the test and find out of you know as much as you think.

How much do you actually know about x?

How much do you know about commas (I aced this one)?

How much do you know actually know about rap?

How much do you actually know about makeup?

Product Recommendation Quiz

This quiz is most closely tied to a direct sale. The quiz taker starts the quiz with the knowledge that you’re going to recommend a product for them. It appeals to impulse buys and lower end products.

Which x is best for you based on your personality?

Which little black dress is best for you?

What’s the ideal shade for your living room?

What kind of wall décor is best for you?

You can use these titles for almost any quiz.

Creating engaging quiz questions

After you’ve gotten the best title for your interactive quiz, the next step is to make questions that keep your quiz taker engaged. They need to give you the right information to qualify and segment your leads. At the same time, they need to be relevant to your quiz taker.

Here’s how you go about it:

Create the outcomes first

Just like your topic and title determines who your quiz will appeal to, your outcomes determine the best questions to ask.

The outcomes are the results your quiz taker gets after they finish the quiz. It’s what they’ve been waiting for. They should be positive and, no matter how bad, show them a way to become better.

The answer to each question is mapped to a specific outcome. Without them, you’re shooting blind. Take the time to ruminate on the possible outcomes related to your topic.

If your quiz helps people figure out their love style, create outcomes that tell them the best love style. In addition to that, use an image and create a 300 – 500 word deep dive into their result. It reinforces your expertise and allows them to see themselves in the outcome they got.

It improves the chances of them sharing and increases engagement on the follow up emails you send.

If you’ve been following along then you’ve already checked out your target audience and know who you’re talking to. Interactive quizzes are informal. Even if your brand isn’t adventurous, it’s a rare opportunity for you to loosen up.

Ask questions using words and phrases your target quiz taker would use naturally. If they would use contractions then you use contractions. If they describe carbonated water with food coloring as soda or pop then describe it the same way.

Make sure your questions are clear and straightforward. This isn’t an eight grade English Literature test. Both you and your quiz taker want to leave the experience with a positive impression.

When it doubt, stick to questions that can be answered with yes, no, or maybe. You can also use agree or disagree as answers.

That doesn’t mean the questions should be boring. Start with an exciting question and end with an exciting question.

Allow your brand to shine

You want your interactive quiz to be a positive touchpoint between your audience and your brand. We touched on using language your audience would understand and allowing yourself to loosen up.

At the same time, you should avoid current pop culture references because it’ll limit the shelf life of your quiz. Instead, incorporate themes that are at the essence of your brand.

If you’re environmentally conscious then find a way to incorporate that type of question.

If creating lasting success is one of the pillars of your brand then make that a part of your quiz.

Your brand is unique and by associating with you, your audience uses you as a reflection of their self-identity. Reinforce the qualities that brought them to you in the first place.

Number of questions (7-10)

This is a hotly debated topic. Some sources say use seven questions. Some sources ten. We have our own data which we’ll release eventually.

Until then, stick with between 7-10 questions. This is long enough to feel like you’ve asked proper questions and short enough to prevent fatigue.

This is a rule of thumb and you should by all means test it yourself.

Creating the lead capture page that converts quiz takers

This is the moment of truth. All your hard work will be paid off here – or not.

Remember that pesky 2-4% conversion rate most websites suffer from? This is where you get 10x that number on the conservative end.

There are two driving factors that make interactive quizzes for lead generation so powerful.

The first one is a psychological phenomenon known as the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy states that we continue an action because of the time and resources we’ve already invested in it. In this instance, the sunk cost isn’t much but you’re producing micro commitments with every answered question.

Have you ever started something and decided not to quit because you’ve already spent so much time on it?

The second driving factor is because the quiz is personal. You want the results because they’re for you and you alone. They’re not for John, Lucy, or Dave. By virtue of taking the quiz, most of the hard work is already done. With your lead capture page, it’s just to seal the deal.

With quizzes, you need to tie the lead capture page to the result they want to achieve. If they’re looking to buy a little black dress then you can say something like:

“Let us know where we should send your personalized little black dress recommendation”

I’m not a fashionista. Don’t use that heading. The point is, your ask ties it into the entire reason they’re taking the quiz. It works much better than “sign up for our mailing list.”

How to craft the description

The description reinforces the promise you made in the heading. Using the same example from above, your description can let them know you’ll send their personalized recommendation and give them tips to make the most of their little black dress.

How to promote your interactive quiz

You spent a lot of time and energy creating your quiz. It’s time to post it on your website and get 10,000 leads right? I wish.

It takes a tiny bit more work than that. There are countless ways to promote your interactive quiz and get tons of leads. We’ll touch on a few.

Facebook

Facebook has billions of users. You only want a teeny tiny portion. If you’re already active on Facebook then dropping your link in relevant groups is an easy win for you. Just make sure you preface it with an engaging description/comment before you place your link.

Tell the viewer what the quiz is about, what they stand to gain, and why it matters.

If you’ve got a few dollars then you can also create a post on your page and boost it. Remember, quizzes are built to be shared.

Twitter

Twitter is notoriously fickle. It can take you from zero to one hundred real quick. Share your quiz on Twitter multiple times while experimenting with different hashtags and mentioning relevant influencers. All it takes is for one person to start the movement.

Pinterest

Pinterest is built to send people to different – interesting – websites. The most important benefit is that a Pin has a much longer shelf life than almost any other social network. It can continue to get pinned over and over again.

Use a tool like Canva to make compelling images for your interactive quiz and share them in relevant group boards. This has benefits well beyond just your quiz. You can use the group boards you join to build your own following and promote other content.

Email list

This is meta. You’re using your email list to promote your newest lead magnet. The power in this approach is that your list will be much more willing to part with their email address. You can then resegment them and send better emails.

In addition to that, they’ll promote their results on their social media channels and help you get the word out.

Write a blog post about it

Another quick win is to write a blog post about your quiz and promote the post. Use it like a content upgrade to add more value to your post. You’ll continue to get traffic to the post and leads long after your initial push.

If you don’t have a lot of traffic right now, don’t worry, after an initial promotional push, the backlinks and traffic will come. Interactive content truly is epic.

Generating instant revenue from your interactive quiz

59% of shoppers who experienced personalization say it affects their purchasing behavior. 90% of them say they’ve bought on impulse while shopping online.

74% of online buyers say they get frustrated with brands who show them online results that have nothing to do with their preferences or purchasing behavior.

What does this mean for you?

The data is telling us that people want products and services tailored to their unique needs. They don’t want the ten thousand other products that could be for them.

Your quiz gives you enough insight to recommend a product right away. The only caveat is that you won’t be able to sell a high ticket item.

Enter the world of front-end offers.

A front-end offer (also known as a tripwire offer) is relevant to your main products but much cheaper. This could be a discounted game for your console. It could be a cheap Ebook that compliments your signature course. It can even be an accessory that compliments the little black dress.

There are two things you need to get right with a front-end offer.

It needs to be relatively inexpensive. This doesn’t mean cheap. If you’re selling $1,000 bags then it wouldn’t make sense for your brand to offer $5 bracelets.

The second thing is it needs to be relevant to the next product you plan on selling. The reason many people don’t see the benefits of front-end offers is because they’re irrelevant to the main offer.

If they buy a front-end offer that’s an Ebook on dog obedience, they probably don’t want a course on cat obedience. It sounds obvious but this is an important point.

If you use advertising to drive traffic to your quiz then the front end offer can offset some of your ad costs.

Marketing to your leads after they’ve opted in through your quiz

When you create your quiz correctly, the leads you get are segmented by outcome. Apart from getting the contact information, segmentation allows you to send better email messages.

Your open rates go up

Your click-through rates go up

Your revenue increases

Segmentation is like the holy grail of email marketing. Traditionally, it can be hit and miss. With quizzes, you get it right from the beginning.

So what do you do with those segmented contacts? Send them to a sequence that all your contacts enter? That would be doing yourself (and your contacts a disservice).

Instead, send them emails tailored to what they’ve already revealed about themselves. With KyLeads, you have the built-in ability to segment users based on their outcome.

We like to use what we call Humanity Marketing (HM for short). It’s simply the process of tailoring your marketing based on real human relationships. The result is you send better emails, get better responses, and generate more revenue.

It’s a little much to get into here, let’s look at a welcome email series you can use.

Immediate welcome emails that reinforce the core benefit they’ll get. Give a bonus if possible. Use this as an opportunity to tell a story.

Talk to the specific outcome they got from the quiz and provide a quick win relevant to them.

Instills buying beliefs (these are the things they need to agree with/understand in order to buy from you)

Continue building buying beliefs, show real-world examples, and if possible give a bonus/resource

Instill more buying beliefs and make a soft pitch for your mid-tier product

Final buying belief and an ask for a webinar/consultation/whatever makes sense to you that’ll move them to the bottom of the funnel to purchase stage.

This is a very general overview of how to email your new leads. It goes much deeper than this but we’re strapped for space. I’ll make sure to create a post that dives deep into this process.

Conclusion

There you have it, a quick rundown of how to use interactive quizzes to generate qualified leads for your business. The process is straightforward:

Choose a relevant topic that’ll appeal to your audience

Develop multiple outcomes that shed light on their personality

Create engaging questions

Promote it all over the place

Send emails related to the outcome they got through the interactive quiz

Interactive quizzes consistently outperform traditional lead capture methods. It takes a little bit of time to get it perfect. Once you do, it’ll generate leads for a long time to come.

Let me know if you’d like to add anything or if you hit any snags while making quizzes in the comments.